This is an incredibly shallow analysis of what’s going on in the mainline churches. Here’s the (old, old) story, according to the author, Jim Tonkowich the president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy:

The left–also known as progressives, liberals, revisionists, and (in some circles) heretics–base their convictions on individualism, subjectivity, and majority vote with passing references to Scripture and creeds. The right–also known as traditionalists, conservatives, evangelicals, and orthodox (not necessarily said as a compliment)–insist on submission to the authority of the Bible and of historic confessions, regardless of contemporary preferences. It is this division that makes the conflict between the two sides so rancorous. Compromise on issues is possible. Compromise on the fundamental questions of truth and authority is not.

Revisionists are for gay marriage and clergy, divestment from Israel, and new names for the Trinity. Traditionalists, well, aren’t. And the reason left and right can’t get along, according to Tonkowich, is that they “live in parallel universes and can barely communicate with each other.”

While it’s probably true that there are some people who base their theology on “individualism, subjectivity, and majority vote” to say that this is true of “the left” as a whole is surely a slur. Otherwise, why would people who are just making it up as they go along, as Mr. Tonkowich claims, bother to do all that theology and biblical exegesis?

And many on the “right” may be sure that they are simply adhering to the authority of the Bible, but debate and differences of opinion about “what the Bible says” on a particular matter is hardly new. Otherwise, why are there so many churches each with their own version of what the Bible says on a host of disputed issues?

Far from being a simple tale of realists vs. relativists, there are people on both sides of most of the controversial issues in our churches who take the authority of the Bible and our traditions seriously. Take the case of homosexuality. Do the proscriptions in the Bible apply to all romantic same-sex relationships, or only exploitative or promiscuous ones? The question isn’t just “what the Bible says” but how we apply Biblical principles to reality as we know it. Many of us have experience of faithful, monogamous gay relationships and have a hard time seeing them as manifestations of idolatry or violations of the moral order. Therefore we’re led to question whether what the Bible seems to condemn is the same phenomenon, in the morally relevant respects, as the one we’re familiar with. Even someone like Richard Hays, who ultimately comes down on the traditionalist side, concedes that the Bible alone doesn’t provide unequivocal guidance here. Either way, though, we have people grappling seriously with the witness of Scripture and trying to fit their experience of the world into that. This is a far cry from the kind of heedless relativism that Tonkowich accuses “revisionists” of.

The same kinds of considerations could be brought to bear on the other issues Tonkowich mentions. But that would complicate the left/revisionist/heretic vs. right/traditionalist/orthodox storyline. (Actually, I’m not even sure why promoting divestment from Israel is supposed to be a sign of relativism or ignoring the authority of the Bible. This doesn’t seem like something historic Christianity has really had a position on.)

I’m not going to defend everything that left-of-center theologians and church bureaucracies come up with. There are undoubtedly some people in the church whose views differ little from your average Unitarian, and I’m sure by some standards my theological views are right-of-center, if we must use the language of “left” and “right” in the church. But I also believe that sincere Christians trying to be faithful to the Gospel can come to different conclusions about disputed issues. And I don’t think characterizing our differences in such tendentious terms is a helpful way for us to live together and maybe even learn something from one another about what it means to follow Jesus.